News

iHome ships iA5 alarm clock for iPhone, iPod

By Charles Starrett ● Tuesday, March 23, 2010

iHome is now shipping its iA5 app-enhanced alarm clock for the iPhone and iPod. Recipient of an iLounge Best of Show Finalist award at the 2010 CES, the iA5 offers an extended, front-center mounted dock, a standard clock face hidden behind the front grill, which also houses a single audio driver with a Reson8 speaker chamber, bass and treble EQ adjustments, a programmable snooze function, and a line-in jack for other audio devices. Notably, the iA5 also integrates with the company’s free iHome + Sleep app, which deactivates the built-in display to turn the connected iPhone or iPod touch into a large clock screen, with multiple alarms—which can be set to post Twitter or Facebook alerts when the users goes to sleep or awakens—a sleep statistic tracker, weather widgets, and a news tracker for catching up on events happening while the user is sleeping. The iHome iA5 app-enhanced alarm clock for the iPhone and iPod is available now and sells for $100.

Comments

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I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of this product. Does anyone know if it will accommodate a cased iPhone? It looks like it might.

Posted by lkalliance on March 23, 2010 at 1:00 PM (CDT)

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Odd that they’re just announcing this shipping, I’ve had mine for nearly a month. There are some design flaws with the unit and the app (and of course some problems on the iPhone’s end with the whole third party app thing—of course this isn’t iHome’s fault), but overall I’ve been very satisfied with my month of usage. Highly recommended.

@ikalliance The only trouble with a cased iPhone may be the distance from the front of the unit to the dock connector. It’s a pretty snug fit on my caseless 3GS. Maybe if it’s a really thin case. As far as on the sides, there’s nothing obstructing it.

Posted by Jordo on March 23, 2010 at 1:21 PM (CDT)

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From the photo, it looks like iHome finally ditched the bright-enough-to-land-Space-Shuttles backlit clock display. Is this, at last, an iHome alarm clock I can actually use in my bedroom at night?

Posted by Herr Doktor on March 23, 2010 at 1:43 PM (CDT)

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I was afraid you’d say that, jordo. ;) I use a Switcheasy Capsule Rebel, which isn’t a skin-thin sort of case.

What kind of problems have you experienced? I’ve had an Xtrememac Luna for the last three years, and I keep turning off the alarm when I am meant to be hitting snooze. And it doesn’t work EFFECTIVELY with the iPhone.

Posted by lkalliance on March 23, 2010 at 2:16 PM (CDT)

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@ikallianace I’ve had no problems with the snooze/off buttons. If you find a picture of the back of the unit, the long button that runs right at the top of the unit is the snooze button, while the square-shaped “h” button further down the back of the unit is the off button. Nice set up.

The problem that Herr Doktor mentioned is my biggest complaint: I have to keep the display off while I sleep at night because of its brightness. Hitting the snooze button changes the brightness (it has three levels of brightness), but even the dimmest setting is too bright for me. Granted, I like complete darkness when I sleep and I think for most people it would be fine (I’ve never had an alarm that’s been dim enough for me). The great thing about the iA5 is if you hit the snooze button after you put it on the dimmest setting, it turns the display off. That’s great for someone like me who doesn’t want any light. All I have to do is hit the snooze button again and the display comes back on.

The only other complaint I have is that (as far as I can tell) if you want to wake up to a specific song using the hardware alarm, you have to set an additional software alarm set to go off at the exact same time as the hardware alarm. Most people can probably just set the software alarm and be fine with it. I’m worried that I’ll forget to turn on the app one night and miss the alarm.

Besides that, there’s a few bugs with the app. I’ve never been able to get the sleep data to work correctly—it never states the “bedtime” and it often has a middle of the day time for the wake time. The hours of sleep are frequently wrong, too. The good news is that this should be fixable with a software update.